Never one to mince words or hold back his opinions, Gore Vidal says he regrets voting for President Barack Obama last year and calls Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, "the stupidest man in the country" in a wide-ranging interview with The Times of London.

Audit finds Northeast Ohio prison in compliance with only two-thirds of state standards

A recent audit of the Ohio prison bought by Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA) found the private prison is only meeting
66.7 percent of the state’s standards. The report found a total of 47 violations in the CCA-owned
prison, which the state government sold to CCA last year as part of a
privatization push set out in Ohio’s 2012-13 budget.

The news comes slightly more than
two weeks after CityBeat published a story looking at the many
problems presented by Ohio’s policy to privatize prisons (“Liberty for
Sale,” issue of Sept. 19).

“It was apparent throughout certain departments that DRC
policy and procedure is not being followed,” the audit said. “Staff was
interviewed and some stated they are not sure what to do because of the
confusion between CCA policy and DRC policy. Some staff expressed safety
concerns due to low staffing numbers and not having enough coverage.
Other staff stated that there is increased confusion due to all the
staffing transitions.”

The report says “there has been a big staff turnover,” and
only one staff person was properly trained to meet Ohio Risk Assessment
System standards. The audit found that a workplace violence liaison
wasn’t appointed or trained. Inmates complained they felt unsafe and
that staff “had their hands tied’” and “had little control over some
situations.”

The local fire plan had no specific steps to release
inmates from locked areas in case of emergency, and local employees said
“they had no idea what they should do” in case of a fire emergency.

The audit also found all housing units provided less than
the required 25 square feet on unencumbered space per occupant. It found
single watch cells held two prisoners with some sleeping on the floor,
and some triple-bunked cells had a third inmate sleeping on a mattress
on the floor.

Searches in general seemed to be a problem for CCA.
Documentation showed that contraband searches were only done 16 days in
August. When the searches were done, the contraband was not properly
processed to the vault and was sometimes left in desks. The private
prison also could not provide documentation that proved executive staff were conducting weekly rounds to informally observe living and working
conditions among inmates and staff.

These findings, although major, are only the tip of the
iceberg: Inmates claimed laundry and cell cleaning services were not
provided and CCA could not prove otherwise, recreation time was not
always allowed five times a week in segregation as required, food
quality and sanitization was not up to standards, infirmary patients
were “not seen timely,” patients’ doctor appointments were often delayed
with follow-ups rarely occurring, the facility had no written confined
space program, the health care administrator could not explain or show
an overall plan and nursing competency evaluations were not completed
before the audit was conducted. Many more issues were found as well.

The one bright spot in the report is ODRC found staff to
be “very professional, friendly and helpful during the audit.” Inmates
were also “dressed appropriately and found to be wearing their
identification badges.”

The findings shine some light into why ODRC Director Gary
Mohr might have decided to stop privatizing Ohio’s prisons. On Sept. 25 —
the same day the audit was mailed to Mohr’s office — Mohr announced his
department would focus on sentencing reforms to bring down recidivism
instead of saving costs by privatizing more prisons. The news came
during the week CityBeat’s cover story on private prisons was in stands.

Mohr is one of many in Gov. John Kasich’s administration
to have previous connections to CCA. He advised the private prison
company “in areas of staff leadership, and development and implementing
unit management,” according to the ODRC website. Donald Thibaut,
Kasich’s former chief of staff and close friend, now lobbies for CCA.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine also helped CCA reopen its Youngstown
facility in 2004 with a federal contract during his term as U.S.
senator.

The report confirms a lot of what CityBeat found in its in-depth look at private prisons. The studies cited in CityBeat’s
Sept. 17 story — including research by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Ohio — found multiple issues in private prisons’
standards around the country. One study by George Washington University
found private prisons have a 50 percent higher rate of inmate-on-staff
assault and a 66 percent higher rate of inmate-on-inmate assault. The
troubling numbers were attributed to lower standards at private prisons
that keep costs low and profits high.

The lower standards are coupled with a private prison’s
need to house as many inmates as possible, contrary to public interests
of keeping re-entry to prisons low.

“It doesn’t make any difference to them whether or not a
person eventually integrates back into society,” said Mike Brickner,
communications and public policy director at ACLU. “Looking from a
cynical approach, it actually helps them if that person (is convicted
again) because they come back into their prison and they get money off
them again.”

Poor living and health standards were also found in a
Youngstown prison held by CCA in the 1990s. In 1997, the Youngstown
prison was opened by CCA to house 1,700 of the nation’s most dangerous
criminals.Within one year,
20 prisoners were stabbed, two were murdered and six escaped. The
ensuing public outrage led to higher standards at the facility. The more
stringent rules were credited for leading to the prison’s eventual
closing as the facility was quickly made unprofitable for CCA.

Steve Owen, spokesperson for CCA, responded to the audit
in a statement: “CCA is taking concrete corrective steps to ensure that
this facility meets not only the ODRC's goals but our own high
expectations for our facilities. We are working in partnership with the
ODRC on a development plan, which will lay out a road map to meet our
goals, and our team will meet bi-weekly with ODRC staff and officials
until we have this matter resolved.”

Zoning, religion at heart of spat over industrial park

The Hamilton County Board of County Commissioners heard
both sides Wednesday in an appeal that pits the Jehovah’s Witnesses
against Harrison Township.

The dispute stems from a plot of land that, through some
legal wrangling and a Joint Economic Development Agreement, Harrison
Township officials say can only be used for industrial purposes that
create jobs.

The Southwest Ohio Assembly Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses
wants to build a massive assembly hall that they say would be a draw to
the 28,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in the region and create jobs in
surrounding service sector businesses.

The Hamilton County Rural Zoning Commission denied
permission to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, citing fear over the impact to
local businesses and traffic, causing the religious group to appeal the
decision to the Board of County Commissioners.

Board President Greg Hartmann said commissioners would set a date in the coming weeks to arrive at a decision.

Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes lawyer Chris Finney represented the Witnesses before the board.

Finney argued that the Zoning Commission was wrong to deny
permission to build the assembly hall. He pointed to the positive
economic impact such halls have had in other states and brought
witnesses to testify about the potential impact it could have on
Cincinnati.

According to a slide show presented before the board, the
hall could result in $1.19 million in annual tax revenue and create 421
jobs in the service industry surrounding the site.

Being a religious institution, the hall would be tax-exempt and would be staffed by volunteers.

Harrison Township officials argued that the area was
created under a special agreement that requires industrial use and that
any businesses located there create jobs and enhance economic
development.

Mayor Joel McGuire said the township had offered up other
locations for the assembly hall, but the Witnesses were fixated on the
one.

“That’s why we’re in the all-or-nothing situation we’re in
because they insist on this particular spot as opposed to the many
other locations where there’d be no problems at all,” McGuire said.

Bye, bye “Beautiful Ohio” plate, hello word scramble

In case you haven’t noticed, Ohio has gained a new
distinction among the 50 states — that with the ugliest license plate.

Gone, after just three-and-a-half years, is the “Beautiful Ohio”
plate, a bucolic affair that managed to combine green rolling hills, a red
barn, a city skyline, trees, a yellow sunburst, the Wright Brothers’ plane and
the year of statehood. The Automobile License Plate Collectors Association gave
it second place in its Best New License Plate contest in 2009.

The new standard-issue plate, which went on sale April 15,
is called “Ohio Pride” (no, not that pride). The word Ohio appears on a wide,
red isosceles triangle bleeding from the top of the plate. And behind the plate
number is a background of 46 slogans, identifiers and products “describing what
makes Ohio a great state.” Such as: “State of Perfect Balance,” “The Heart of
it All,” “Newark Earthworks,” “Serpent Mound,” “Polymer Capital of the World,”
“Steel City” and “Walleye.” It is devoid of images.

Pity the passing driver who tries to make out any of the 46
words and phrases. Because they are jammed together in light gray lettering,
they blur into a hazy backdrop. Don’t take CityBeat’s
word for it. Pull up behind a car with one of the new plates. Maybe you’ll be
able to make out two of the larger-print items, “Birthplace of Aviation” and
“DiscoverOhio.com.”

The cacophony of slogans and products gives the new Ohio
plate an edge over the regular plates of many states, said Greg Gibson,
president of the ALPCA. But he, too, was confounded by their legibility. “I
doubt that the slogans can be read at any distance,” he says.

Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles spokesman Dustyn Fox said no
one in the Kasich administration objected to the Beautiful Ohio plate, which
was designed with the help of former First Lady Frances Strickland.

“Traditionally, each new administration redesigns the Ohio
plate,” Fox says. “A selection committee made up from BMV officials, Ohio
Department of Public Safety officials and representatives from the governor’s
office choose final designs. The governor and first lady make the final
decision.”

The review panel considered five or six designs before
settling on one submitted by students at the Columbus College of Art and
Design. The selection, however, represents an act of artistic regression in a
milieu that has gone wild for visual elements in the past decade. Wyoming, for
instance, has a bucking bronco, Oklahoma a Native American archer, Utah a skier
and South Dakota, Mt. Rushmore. Elsewhere, we see trees, mountain ranges,
peaches, oranges, a cactus, a pelican and a buffalo.

Closer to home, Indiana has a blue license plate
depicting the state seal, but which looks like a clock face in traffic.
Kentucky plates bear the slogan “Unbridled Spirit” and the head of a hurtling
race horse. Cleverly, they also show the vehicle owner’s home county, which
allows police officers to snag out-of-county drivers for traffic violations.

The following are the four license plate designs that were considered by the state BMV:

Republicans made a lot of fuss about Barack Obama’s associations during last year’s presidential campaign. Now that same standard might come back to haunt them.

Because Obama attended church where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached, the GOP told us it must mean that Obama shared all of Wright’s incendiary beliefs about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the origin of the AIDS virus. Because Obama lived near ex-‘60s radical William Ayers and attended some of the same events, they breathlessly added that it must mean Obama approves of blowing up public buildings.

What, then, does that say about Rob Portman, the former GOP congressman who is the odds-on favorite to run for George Voinovich’s seat in the U.S. Senate in 2010?

Occupy Cincinnati supporters angry over publication of home and email addresses

Leslie Ghiz has angered some Occupy Cincinnati supporters by posting on her Facebook page the home and email address of one individual and the email address of another who criticized her for pressuring City Manager Milton Dohoney to kick the protesters out of the park. The two individuals wrote to Ghiz's campaign, according to Ghiz.

Bill would remove language monitoring sizes of magazines

Six months ago today, 26 children and adults were slaughtered at the hands of Adam Lanza and a semi-automatic Bushmaster XM12 E2S rifle inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., one of the deadliest school shooting massacres in U.S. history. As parents, friends, family and gun control advocates around the country mourn and commemorate the loss of life, Ohio gun rights advocates are worried about something else.

Their concern: how to make it easier for Ohio citizens to obtain high-round magazines for their semi-automatic weapons.

A new Ohio House Bill introduced by State Rep. John Becker (R-Union Township) could, if passed, allow people to purchase high-round magazines for semi-automatic weapons, removing language from the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) that currently restricts use of magazines exceeding 31 rounds for semi-automatic weapons.

Specifically, the proposed bill would remove the definition of "automatic firearm" from section 2923.11 from the ORC that currently qualifies a weapon traditionally defined as a semi-automatic firearm (which operated by firing only once for each pull of the trigger) as an automatic firearm under Ohio law when used with a magazine holding greater than 31 rounds of ammunition.

Gun rights advocates are in favor of deleting the line because qualifying a semi-automatic as an automatic weapon under Ohio law (dependent on magazine size) subjects gun owners to greater background checks and stricter purchasing restrictions, which they consider an unlawful hassle and burden.

Jim Irvine, Chairman of the Buckeye Firearms Association, says that the sentence Becker has proposed to remove is one that inherently conflicts the actual definition of an automatic weapon; he says it doesn't make sense to qualify a semi-automatic weapon under the same umbrella as an automatic weapon when the two are entirely different types of firearms.

He says that the issue is one of convenience for most semi-automatic gun owners, including himself. "Loading up magazines can take time," he says. "When I go to the shooting range I want to use my time up shooting, not reloading."

That extra time, though, is exactly the point of the wording in the ORC, explains Toby Hoover, executive director for the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence. Limited magazines were what eventually stopped the Arizona gunman who shot former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords because a bystander was able to attack the shooter when he dropped a magazine while trying to reload.

Hoover asserts that gun rights advocates like Irvine are being subversive in their reasons for wanting to change the changed law.

She says the legal issue is not that the ORC is trying to directly equate semi-automatic weapons to automatic weapons — they clearly operate differently — but that grouping them together using that magazine restriction is a common-sense way to define them both as dangerous, unnecessary forms of firearms that simply shouldn't be readily accessible to the average gun owner. Semi-automatic weapons are extremely easy to purchase in Ohio, she says, while purchasing automatic weapons involves many more complicated restrictions and regulations.

"I'm just really upset with the way they [Ohio Republicans and gun lobbyists] are ignoring the fact that people in Ohio want gun restrictions. They're just going the opposite direction," she says. "If they're really concerned about the wording of the law, just have them maybe separate the definitions but keep the restrictions the same."

Ohio is one of several states monitor magazine limits on semi-automatic weapons, she explains, so it's not unusual at all that the ORC does so.

Adam Lanza, Sandy Hook's shooter, had several 30-round magazines on him and was also carrying two handguns. It's estimated he used somewhere between four and 10 magazines during the shootings, which took place over a matter of minutes.

The bill has been assigned to the House's Transportation, Public Safety and Homeland Security committee, where it currently awaits hearing

Actress and acclaimed rapper Natalie Portman played up her
Cincinnati ties in a Wednesday appearance at the Obama campaign-sponsored
Women’s Summit at Union Terminal.

The Academy Award-winner said her mother graduated from
Walnut Hills High School and her grandfather — Art Stevens — grew Champion
Windows in Cincinnati after starting as a door-to-door salesman.

“Because of that, I see President Obama’s support of small
businesses as so crucial to our economy,” Portman said, adding that Obama has
cut taxes for small businesses 82 times since taking office.

Portman said the Republican Party and their presidential
ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan did not have the best interests of women at
heart. She pointed to attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s mandates that
insurers provide birth control to women and ensure preventative care such as
mammogram screenings for breast cancer is covered, as well a bill sponsored by
Ryan and embattled congressional candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) that would
eliminate all abortion funding except for cases of “forcible rape.”

“We need to stand up for ourselves,” Portman told the packed
auditorium that was crowded with an audience of mostly women. “Our mothers and
our grandmothers made giant steps for us. We can’t go backwards. We need to go
forwards.”

An Ohio Romney rep said the campaign did not have a comment
on the Women’s Summit, but is hosting a “Women for Mitt” call night featuring
former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao in Kenwood on Thursday.

“Ohio women believe in the Romney-Ryan
path for America that will result in lower taxes, less spending, less
government and more economic growth,” said a release from Romney’s campaign.

The Obama event on Wednesday catered to
women, with Chapek telling the audience she knew how difficult it was for women
to get there with jobs and the challenge of getting their kids to school. She
framed women’s role in the election as a conversation.

“The conversation starts like this:
women, turns out, we’re not a constituency,” Chapek said. “Who knew? Apparently
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, because they don’t realize that women are actually a
majority in this country.”

She told the women gathered to have conversations with their
neighbors and friends and encourage them to volunteer at phone banks or
knocking on doors.

Strickland talked about the need to reconcile qualities
traditionally seen as masculine — like power — with those seen as feminine —
like love.

She also took the opportunity to riff on a statement made by
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who said political wives were heroes because while they’re
husbands were on stage in the limelight, they were at home doing things like
laundry.

“I even did the laundry last night so I could come here
today,” Strickland said. “Even (former Gov.) Ted does the laundry.”

“I’m a celebrity photo enthusiast,” he said. “Nothing’s
official until I’ve taken a picture of it.”

Boston said he didn’t vote in 2008, but felt the upcoming
November election was too important to sit out. He said he was leaning toward
voting for Obama and liked his health care overhaul, but was opposed to the
president’s views on gay marriage for religious reasons.

Gwen McFarlin, who works in health care administration, said
she was there to support President Obama. She supports his health care overhaul,
but thinks it’s a first step to further changes.

She said she was encouraged by the diversity of the women in
attendance.

“For me, I’m sure the women who are here represent all
the world, not one issue,” she said. “We’re here as a group of women working to
empower all the U.S. and the world.”

The lead feature article in the new issue of The New Yorker focuses on the anti-gang program Cincinnati implemented two years ago. John Seabrook's "Don't Shoot" is a long, well-researched and well-written story about David Kennedy, who devised the "Ceasefire" crime-fighting model in Boston, and his experiences here implementing C.I.R.V. (Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Crime).

The push to privatize services traditionally provided by government is the focus of a community forum slated for next week.

Since the Reagan era, privatization — or the outsourcing of public services to the private sector — has been touted as a way to make government more efficient and less costly. Critics, however, allege it is a form of union-busting that often leads to lower wages for workers and reduced accountability to the public.